Pro-Palestine protester attempts to disrupt Bangalore Literature Festival session

Bengaluru: An unidentified man claiming to be a free speech activist walked into the LaLit Ashok hotel premises, where the Bangalore Literature Festival 2023 was being held over the weekend, holding up two hand-written placards: one demanding justice for Manipur and Palestine, and the other an “end to Apartheid, Occupation, and Colonialism”. 

The man, dressed in a blue kurta and a bandanna, paraded within the venue with the placards held high, shouting for the organisers and festival-goers to pay heed to his claims near the poolside stage. One of his placards read: “Not only literature per se, but literature in the service of truth and ‘the still larger cause of humanity’, speak up for human civil liberties and rights!” while the other had what appeared to be the Preamble of the Constitution. 

Within minutes, the hotel staff ripped away his placards from him and ushered him out of the venue as he kept yelling that they were committing free speech infringement at the literary festival and called the security “goons”. 

V Ravichandar, one of the organisers of the event, told DH what he relayed to the demonstrator. “It is a cause we empathise with and one that resonates with many but there is a time and space for it — something I tried to convince him too. I told him: ‘Please don’t misuse our hospitality and be disruptive but he argued that it was his freedom of speech,” he said. 

Ravichandar pointed out that the organisers had paid for the space and that the demonstrator could take his protest to a public space in the city. 

Outside the venue, the demonstrator continued to shout slogans in support of justice for the people of Manipur and Palestine across the road for over an hour until the traffic police intervened and asked him to leave.